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A Return of Biblical Proportions (4315)

The Good Book is back in public schools.

WHITEHOUSE, Texas — At some point this year in John Keeling’s Bible class at Whitehouse High School, students will open their textbooks to page 222 of Unit 9, The Four Gospels.

In the next four pages, they will take in artwork such as Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper and Paul Gauguin’s The Yellow Christ, learn about the rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar and gain insight into biblical allusions in Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea and Countee Cullen’s poem “Simon the Cyrenian Speaks.”

Similar scenes are unfolding every school day this year in 170 public schools across 43 states, as students and teachers tackle the Bible using a textbook first published in 2005 by the Bible Literacy Project, The Bible and Its Influence.

Many welcome the return of the Bible to public education. According to the Bible Literacy Project website, in a 2006 survey of English professors from Yale, Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, Texas A&M, University of California-Berkeley and others, all agreed with the statement: “Regardless of a person’s faith, an educated person needs to know the Bible.” Another 2005 study showed 98% of high-school English teachers agreed Bible literacy was academically advantageous.

“The conclusions of these studies were that students do need to know about the Bible in order to be conversant about Western literature and culture,” said Sarah Jenislawksi, executive director of the Bible Literacy Project. “So many works of literature were written assuming readers would understand these [biblical] references.”

The works of Shakespeare alone contain 1,300 biblical allusions. John Milton’s works draw heavily from the Bible. Much of Martin Luther King Jr.’s teachings and writings are incomprehensible without knowing the Bible, and the same could be said of many great American leaders. And the Advanced Placement English exam is rife with biblical allusions.

First Amendment Protection
Still, it may be surprising to some that teaching the Bible in the classroom is legal in a country where all forms of religious devotion and prayer were prohibited from public schools by the 1963 court decision Abington Township School District v. Schempp.

A recent Pew Research Center study showed that 67% of Americans do not think it’s legal to read from the Bible at all in a public school.

However, Schempp made it clear that academic study of the Bible is still permitted: “Nothing we have said here indicates that such study of the Bible or of religion, when presented objectively as part of a secular program of education, may not be effected consistently with the First Amendment. It certainly may be said that the Bible is worthy of study,” wrote Justice Thomas Clark in the majority opinion.

But is it possible to teach the Bible in a nonsectarian manner?

“We absolutely think so,” Jenislawski said. “You can inform students about the beliefs, but you can’t ask them to conform to the beliefs. You never ask the students to change their belief or defend the belief.” For example, “If a student says, ‘I want to know what the right answer is,’ we refer them to the parents or to their spiritual leader. The teacher is not expected to address these questions,” she said. Teachers receive training and use a “very clear” teacher’s guide, she said.

Fundamentalist Propaganda?

Americans United for Separation of Church and State acknowledges that the study of religion in public schools is constitutional, but advocates using a different approach.

“Rather than cordon the instruction off into a special elective course that many students won’t even take, [we] favor a different approach: Integrate discussion of the Bible and religion into the curriculum where appropriate, and make certain the approach is truly balanced,” Americans United spokesman Rob Boston said. He cited a study in Texas that found “that many public school courses on the Bible reflected a fundamentalist Protestant perspective.”

Boston raised concerns about another Bible curriculum, published by the National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools, which he said has been outlawed by federal courts in Florida and Texas. He said The Bible and Its Influence is “better but still has flaws.”

The Bible and Its Influence was reviewed by a panel of more than 40 evangelical, Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox, Jewish and secular scholars, teachers and legal experts — including retired Auxiliary Bishop Richard Sklba of Milwaukee and retired Auxiliary Bishop Emil Wcela of Rockville Centre, N.Y., both former chairmen of the Catholic Biblical Association. Neither was available to comment for this story, but Bishop Sklba has endorsed the text, calling it “solidly researched and professionally written.” The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops was unable to comment on the text because it was unfamiliar to them.

Keeling, the high-school social studies teacher in Whitehouse, has taught the Bible course for three years. “I establish rules up front,” he said. “The class is academic. It is nonsectarian. It is not devotional.”

“It’s as if the class gives [students] a pair of glasses with which to see the world with new eyes,” he said. “They quickly come to realize just how pervasive the [biblical] influence is, and I think it helps them appreciate their own history, the history of their country, and the history of their families.”

Comments

It’s good to know,but important Catholics stay informed of the teachings

Posted by Rich on Friday, Dec 3, 2010 4:09 PM (EDT):

Literature courses about the Bible have been around for some time now. I took one in my public high school in 1991.

Posted by Rose on Friday, Dec 3, 2010 1:24 AM (EDT):

I think it’s about time. My 5th grade daughter’s social studies book has a chapter (the one she read yesterday) with a reference to Islam. The section discusses Marco Polo and other traders, but the only trader whose religion is referenced is Mausa Musa (not sure of spelling) who happens to be a Muslim and a very wealthy trader. It would have been better to either include the religious tradition of all the traders or leave all of it out instead of pointing out one and ignoring the others. I want to point that out to the teacher, who may or may not have picked up on that detail in the text. Oh, and she attends a Catholic elementary school.

Posted by Alice C. Linsley on Thursday, Dec 2, 2010 8:44 PM (EDT):

The Bible for education is fine, but that is not the purpose of this book of books. From Genesis to Revelation it carries one central theme: God’s first promise in Eden (Gen. 3:15) which was fulfilled through the blessed Virgin in Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

Posted by Judy on Thursday, Dec 2, 2010 3:55 PM (EDT):

I would hope there are safe guards too, especially in speaking against a particular Christian faith, yet I am so happy to see the class being “offered”. It is most likely and elective.

There where things that happened during the crusades that were not very nice, but these were individuals, and not the main reason for the crusades. Sadly, if you do not tell both sides, it becomes very slanted, and this is really what certain people want; division. Good history books are hard to find these days, that is for sure, but I do know of a few companies that are working hard to put out good books with reliable information, and that is a great improvement.

Christ’s peace to all during this holy Advent Season.

Posted by Alex on Thursday, Dec 2, 2010 3:52 PM (EDT):

Great news! We are begining to retake the conviction that we are “One Nation Under God”

Posted by Toronto on Thursday, Dec 2, 2010 2:18 PM (EDT):

Brilliant! I just sent the article to a friend of mine, a Catholic high school english teacher in Toronto where I am not sure they actually teach the literary and cultural significance and influence of our good book.

Posted by Kathy16670 on Thursday, Dec 2, 2010 12:06 PM (EDT):

Sounds like a step in the right direction. Hopefully it will spread to more high school classrooms, beyond the 170 mentioned.

My local public High School uses a text book that is very anti-Catholic when covering the Crusades, and that period of history.

At the same time, I hope there are strong boundaries in place, to keep a teacher with a personal bias from slanting the curriculum to fit their own purposes. (i.e. as Rob Boston said that many public school courses on the Bible reflected a fundamentalist Protestant perspective.” Or perhaps an atheist teacher wanting to prove “this is what they believe, and this is why it’s wrong,” etc.)

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